


K-I-S-S-I-N-G

by visiblemarket



Series: Teenage Dreams [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: High School AU, M/M, Tree Climbing, make outs against but not precisely in trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 22:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8120890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/visiblemarket/pseuds/visiblemarket
Summary: “So uh—“ he calls out, desperate for a distraction. “This isn’t the—the tree you fell out of and broke your arm, right?” So much for a distraction, he thinks, but Poe calls back down to him cheerfully.  “Nope! This is a lucky tree."  “A lucky tree,” Finn says, mostly to himself. “How…” his foot slips a little and he bites his lip to keep from cursing out loud. “How—how’s it lucky?"  Silence above him; Poe stops moving entirely, actually. Finn knows, because he looks up and sees him momentarily frozen, then quickly shaking his head, as if clearing it. “Uh—I’ll tell you later,” Poe says, and glances down. “You okay down there?"  Finn forces a smile. “Great. Fun. It’s—this is fun."





	

**Author's Note:**

> A surprise sequel to my [id fic high school AU](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7440382), which you'd probably need to read first.
> 
> Well, less a sequel and more just -- another little fun scene within the same universe. But there you go.

“Aren’t we too old for this?"

“You’re never too old to climb a tree, Finn,” says Poe, from a few feet above. Finn peers up at him, trying to map his path — Poe climbs like some sort of slinky jungle cat, effortlessly and like he’s entirely unafraid of falling. It’s a sentiment Finn does not share. He swallows thickly and reaches out for the next branch; it seems stable enough and he pulls himself up, praying his feet won’t slip on the knot he’s using to brace himself.

“Never? What if I was, like, eighty?"

Poe laughs, from way too far above him, and then calls back. “Okay,” he says, sounding breathlessly happy. “I promise not to make you climb any trees when you’re eighty."

Finn pulls himself up another couple of branch-creaking, leaf-rustling inches. Does not look down. Takes a breath. “But you’ll still be doin’ it?”

“Age is just a number, buddy,” Poe says, gleeful; Finn can _hear_ the smile, and shuts his eyes. He can do this. For Poe, he can _do this_. So far he’s managed to keep Poe from realizing just how…not great he feels at this moment; after the requisite “you’ve never climbed a tree?” conversation and Poe’s obvious excitement at introducing him to this apparently classic rite of passage, he’d gone so far as to convince Poe that it was something he desperately _wanted_ to try. So the fact that heights make him queasy and that his hands are perhaps sweating a little too much to provide the most secure grip on tree bark — well, none of that is _encouraging_ , but he can deal with it. _Is_ dealing with it. As long as he thinks of Poe’s face and doesn’t look at the ground, he’ll be fine.

“So uh—“ he calls out, desperate for a distraction. “This isn’t the—the tree you fell out of and broke your arm, right?” _So much for a distraction_ , he thinks, but Poe calls back down to him cheerfully.

“Nope! This is a lucky tree."

“A lucky tree,” Finn says, mostly to himself. “How…” his foot slips a little and he bites his lip to keep from cursing out loud. “How—how’s it lucky?"

Silence above him; Poe stops moving entirely, actually. Finn knows, because he looks up and sees him momentarily frozen, then quickly shaking his head, as if clearing it. “Uh—I’ll tell you later,” Poe says, and glances down. “You okay down there?"

Finn forces a smile. “Great. Fun. It’s—this is fun."

Poe frowns, and descends a couple of inches much quicker than he has any right to. “You sure? ‘cause we don’t have to—"

“Race you to the top!” he says, with a great deal more conviction than he feels. Reaches for another branch, scrambles up a couple of inches and tries not to think about how high _the top_ actually is.

“Finn, I’m like—way ahead of you here, buddy."

“Not for long, Dameron,” he tries to tease; it comes out a little shaky, a little breathless, but he’s almost even with Poe by then. Poe snorts and shakes his head, gives him a few seconds more of a head start before he keeps going.

They don’t make it as far as the top. Poe calls out to him to slow down, and around the trunk to where he is. Points out a couple of sturdy-looking branches that are about perpendicular to each other, and hoists his way onto one; reaches down and helps Finn clamber onto the other. It’s okay, actually: the branches _are_ sturdy, thicker than the fence rails they sometimes sit on when they’re hanging out by the fields, just talking. As long as Finn doesn’t look down...

And of course, the minute he thinks it, he looks down.

They aren’t quite at the top of the tree, but they’re certainly far enough — the rest of the forest unfolds around them, and he can kind of see the Damerons’ ranch in the distance. He spots a little orange blur loping around the yard, scattering birds — Kes must’ve let BB-8 out while he made dinner. Directly below Finn’s dangling legs are a tangled net of branches, just waiting to smack him up on his way down.

 _Shit_ , he thinks, and jerks his head up. Poe’s looking at him, all tender-eyed and concerned.

“Nice,” Finn manages.

“Yeah?” Poe says, softly — he’s all intense now, in that way he has when he’s nervous but about to say something really nice and romantic, which makes Finn wish he felt less like throwing up. He tries to focus on Poe, whose eyes are shining, whose cheeks are flushed. His curls flutter lightly over his forehead, caught occasionally by the breeze that’s rustling through the leaves around them. He looks like some sort of Renaissance angel and Finn knows he’s staring but he almost doesn’t care — his current choices are to look at the horizon, at the ground, or at Poe. And it’s not like Finn ever really needs an _excuse_ to look at Poe, but he’s sure as hell doesn’t need a reminder of just how far from the ground he is.

“I uh—you really like all this stuff, huh?” he says, a deeply uninspired line, but it’s the best he can do at the moment.

“All what stuff?” Poe says, a little defensively.

“You know the—outdoors stuff."

Poe blushes, and then smiles, a little shyly. “Yeah, I guess."

“Your, uh—your dad get you into it?"

“My mom, actually,” Poe says, and Finn wishes he’d kept his damn mouth shut — Finn’s bumbled into the topic of Poe’s mom more than enough times to know it’s a sensitive subject with both of the Damerons. Though Poe seems all right with it right now, for once. Keeps talking, anyway. “When I was a kid, y’know — when we first moved here, my grandpa'd been takin’ care of me mostly, while my parents were deployed. So my English was a little weird, and kids are — well, kids are kids, and I didn’t really have a lot of friends, at first. So my mom, she liked to — take me out for walks and stuff, have adventures…” Poe swallows, and glances over at Finn again. “Kid stuff, y’know? Camping in the backyard, stuff like that."

“Sure,” says Finn, who doesn’t — his type of kids stuff had involved a lot of coloring quietly, doing his best to seem invisible, and succeeding all too well sometimes.

“So when she got sick, I’d still—I’d go out and bring her back stuff, like a cool rock or a feather or just—something, and then I’d tell her about everywhere I’d been, so she wouldn’t get—“ Poe waves his hands as if trying to shape the air in front of him, entirely unconcerned with the air below him and his lack of a proper grip on the branch he’s sitting on. “Bored, or whatever. And then it just kinda stuck. After, I just—I started doing this. I didn’t want to run away, exactly, but I just…” Poe sighs. “I needed the distance. Climbing up here is like, you’re so far away from everything, but you can see everything too, right? You can make sure everything’s okay, but you don’t have to be right there.” Poe shrugs, and taps nervously at the branch beneath him. “Anyway. I’m sorry."

“For what?” Finn says, rapt.

“I didn’t mean to—I don’t like talking about all that. My mom, and everything. Especially with you, you know, I…” he trails off, and Finn blinks.

“ _Especially_ with me?"

“I mean—“ Poe looks like he wants to reach out, but seems to decide to stay put on his branch. “Do you ever think about your parents?"

“Of course,” Finn says, sharper than he intends, mostly out of surprise.

Poe looks guilty, worried, and worst of all, _sad_. Finn _hates_ that look. “You just...never talk about it."

 _Neither do you_ , Finn thinks, but to be fair, Poe just has, so: “There’s not much to...I don’t know much. Anything, actually. I don’t remember them. I was in a group home for a while, when I was like ten. Couple of kids broke into the file room once, passed stuff around. Mine was—kind of vague.” Poe looks like he’s thinking of pushing; Finn’s not sure if he wants him to or not. “I got taken away when I was baby. I don’t know what happened to—them.”

“Do you want to?” Poe says, very quickly.

Finn stares at him. “What?"

“I mean—my dad could…pull some strings. Maybe find something out. If you wanted.”

“Poe,” he says, around the strange, sudden lump in his throat — _does_ he want to? he’s always just kind of assumed he was better off not knowing, but maybe…maybe it’s worth a shot. Maybe it’s not the worst thing that could happen. Maybe he could find out the very worst — that they were terrible, that they didn’t want him, that they gave him up willingly — and it wouldn’t matter anymore, not like it would’ve when he was a kid. He’s eighteen now; he’s going to college in the fall, he’s got a boyfriend who loves him, who sees nothing but the best in him, and a boyfriend’s father who calls him son and always asks him stay for dinner. Most of the time, Finn says yes.

“You don’t have to decide right away,” says Poe, sliding a little closer, making the actual move this time and reaching out to press his hand over Finn’s. “Just think about it, okay?"

Finn nods, and turns his hand over, lets his his fingers slip in between Poe’s.

“So listen,” Poe says, dropping his gaze, but rubbing his thumb carefully along of Finn’s wrist. Finn watches his eyelashes flutter, and the faint blush bloom across his cheeks again.

“I’m listening.” And he is, mostly. He can stare at Poe and listen to him talk at the same time; he’s got a lot of experience in that area.

“Prom’s coming up in a couple of weeks. Snap and Karé and everyone’s gonna rent a limo, the whole thing. And I was thinkin’—"

“Are you asking me to go to prom?"

Poe swallows hard. “Yeah?”

“With Snap and Karé and—everyone?”

“Well, with _me_ , but—we’d share the limo. Maybe have dinner with everyone. If you want."

Finn tightens his grip on the branch beneath him. He _knows_ that he and Poe are just about the worst kept secret at school — they’re not even really a secret at this point, especially not since they’ve started actually going out on real dates. It’s a very small town, after all. But they’re not exactly big on PDAs, and the prospect of walking into prom with Poe, of _dancing_ with him, in front of people, seems like a big step forward, and not quite onto solid ground — into thin, empty air, actually, like a cartoon character who hadn’t notice they’d sped right off the road and over a cliff.

Maybe if Finn were not currently dangling several feet above the ground, resisting the pull of gravity, he’d’ve come up with a less morbid metaphor. As it is, he says the first thing that comes to mind: “What are people going to think?"

Poe blinks. “They’re gonna think, ‘wow, Finn looks great in a tux.’"

“ _Poe_."

“Okay,” Poe says, and squeezes his hand; he looks straight at Finn, making a point to meet his eyes. “It’s not a big deal. We don’t have to if you don’t want to. And if it’s the dancing thing, like, we could just do the dinner part. ”

“You really wanna do this?"

Poe pauses for a moment, and then shrugs. “No, not really."

“Poe,” he huffs, rolling his eyes a little — like hell Poe dragged him out into the woods and up a tree and set up this whole romantic scene just to ask him to prom if he _didn’t actually want to go_.

“What? I thought it might be fun, y’know? Typical high school experience and everything. But if you’re not into it, I’m just as happy to just hang out with you that night, go to the movies, whatever. You know that, right?"

And the worst of it is, he does: anyone else, Finn’d think was messing around, or trying to guilt trip him. Poe _means it_ — he’d be just as happy doing what they do every weekend, no questions asked.

“I—“ Finn sighs, and makes the mistake of glancing down when he looks away. _Fuck_. “Okay man, first off? I’ve gotta get down from here, all right?"

“Yeah?” Poe says, blinking, and then nods. “Yeah, no problem. You okay?"

“Great. Fine. Just gotta—gotta be on solid ground right now."

“Yeah, sure. Just—just watch what I do, okay?"

And of course what Poe _does_ is crawl back down the rough bark of the tree with so much ease that he might as well be skipping. Finn’s approach is—significantly less smooth.

They make it down; Poe lets go a few feet from the ground, and lands steadily on the leaf-lined earth. Finn slips a little, scrapping his shin against a knot, but his feet hit the ground and the rush of relief and overload of adrenaline set his heart pounding and lungs aching. He looks over at Poe, who’s all dark-eyed and obviously concerned, frowning a little, and, well...

“Finn, are you sure you’re—“ Poe starts, and then stops: smiles against Finn’s mouth as Finn kisses him, and falls back against the tree, grabbing at Finn’s shirt and pulling him along. Finn leans into him, presses him up against the trunk; Poe arches up against him, bringing their bodies together even more tightly, running his hands up and down along Finn’s back, humming happily into Finn’s mouth.

“Hi,” Poe says, when they break apart for a second, catching their breaths. Finn nuzzles their noses together and Poe giggles a little, then blushes, dropping his head. It’s like he’s embarrassed about it, like he’s entirely unaware of how adorable he is when he does that.

Finn drops a quick kiss to his mouth and then pulls back. “Okay."

“Okay?” Poe looks up at him. “Okay what?"

“Okay, I’ll go to prom with you, Poe Dameron."

Poe stares at him for a moment, and then grins. “Wait, really?”

“What, you wanna convince me some more?”

Poe giggles again, nodding. Takes Finn’s face in his hands, and pulls him into another kiss. This one’s softer and sweeter, even after Poe’s hands drop to Finn's waist and Finn's tongue slips into Poe’s mouth.

When they break apart this time, Poe’s eyes stay shut for a moment, as he takes a breath, as he leans his head back. His eyelashes flutter open eventually, and he smiles.

“See?” Poe says, voice low, almost reverent, tapping the back of his head against the bark behind him. “Lucky tree.”

Finn snorts. “You’re such a sap."

“Buddy!” Poe says, beaming, eyes sparkling with delight — it’s kind of wonderful. “Was that a pun? I’m so proud of—"

And then Finn kisses him again, and that’s kind of wonderful too.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this otpprompts post](http://morethanonepage.tumblr.com/post/150837626806/otpprompts-imagine-character-a-trying-to).


End file.
